By Richard Harland Smith
Boy of the Streets
Brief Synopsis
A tough street kid tries to use gang violence to break into corrupt city politics.
Cast & Crew
Read More
William Nigh
Director
Jackie Cooper
Chuck Brennan
Maureen O'connor
Norah
Kathleen Burke
Julie Stone
Robert E. O'connor
Rourke
Marjorie Main
Mary Brennan
Film Details
Genre
Drama
Release Date
Dec
8,
1937
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
Monogram Pictures Corp.
Distribution Company
Monogram Pictures Corp.
Country
United States
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 16m
Film Length
6,852ft
(9 reels)
Synopsis
In a predominantly Irish slum in New York, sixteen-year-old Chuck Brennan has become the leader of a gang, in emulation of his father, who, Chuck believes, has become an important leader in ward politics without working at a job. To help Norah, a neighbor whose mother is taken to a sanitarium for tuberculosis, Chuck arranges for her to sing at a nightclub, but because she is underage, women from the Children's Aid Society arrive to take her to an orphanage. Julie Stone has recently inherited the tenement in which Norah and Chuck's family live, and with the help of the neighborhood doctor, she is trying to fix it up. Julie pays to send Norah to a private girls' school. During a fight between Chuck's gang and a rival Italian gang, Spike, a young black shoeshine boy, is killed when he tries to save Chuck from getting hit by a truck. After Chuck's mother blames him for Spike's death, he goes to ward boss Olden's office looking for work, but sees that his father is only Olden's stooge. Chuck then goes to work for gambler Blackie Davis, who is trying to shake down establishments in Chuck's neighborhood, but during a break-in at a laundry warehouse, Chuck tries to prevent Blackie from shooting the neighborhood cop Rourke, and both he and Rourke are shot. In the hospital, Chuck realizes that Blackie used him for a stooge and fought unfairly without giving Rourke a chance. He tells Rourke that he feels bad for calling his father a stooge and gives Blackie's address. After he turns seventeen, Chuck says goodbye to his parents, Julie and Norah, whom he hesitatingly kisses, and ships out with the Navy.
Director
William Nigh
Director
Cast
Jackie Cooper
Chuck Brennan
Maureen O'connor
Norah
Kathleen Burke
Julie Stone
Robert E. O'connor
Rourke
Marjorie Main
Mary Brennan
Matty Fain
Blackie Davis
George Cleveland
Tim Farley
Gordon Elliott
Dr. Allan
Guy Usher
Fog Horn Brennan
Paul White
Spike
Don Latorre
Tony
Edwin Brian
Chuck's lieutenant
Hollis Jewell
Wesley Giraud
Robert Tucker
Kent Rogers
Johnny Morris
Frank Malo
Mortimer Kurt
Henry Caruso
Al Frazer
Frank Bishell
Freddie Jackson
Crew
Gilson Brown
Adapted and dial
Rowland Brown
Original Story
Scott Darling
Adapted and dial
Scott R. Dunlap
Company
W. B. Eason
Assistant Director
E. R. Hickson
Tech Director
George Kann
Producer
George E. Kann
Production Manager
Abe Meyer
Music
Russell Schoengarth
Film Editor
W. C. Smith
Recording Engineer
Gilbert Warrenton
Director of Photography
Film Details
Genre
Drama
Release Date
Dec
8,
1937
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
Monogram Pictures Corp.
Distribution Company
Monogram Pictures Corp.
Country
United States
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 16m
Film Length
6,852ft
(9 reels)
Articles
Boy of the Streets (1937) -
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's reward for Oscar-nominated child star Jackie Cooper, who had brought the studio prestige and profit with his films The Champ (1931), The Bowery (1933), and Treasure Island (1934), was to cut the actor loose once he had hit his awkward teenage years. Floating from studio to studio in search of work, Cooper landed at Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, where he took the lead in Boy of the Streets (1937), the studio's answer to Warner Brothers' socially conscious ghetto drama Dead End (1937). At the time Monogram's most expensive production, Boy of the Streets attends the plight of the children of immigrants crammed together in a New York slum and of progressive efforts to improve their situation. Dead End alumna Marjorie Main costars as Cooper's bone-weary mother (the actress would later inherit Cooper's former costar, Wallace Beery, at Metro) while Island of Lost Souls' "Panther Woman" Kathleen Burke appears as an heiress turned slumlord, and future cowboy actor Bill Elliott (still billed as Gordon Elliott) plays a reform-minded physician. The film's success in 1937 earned Cooper a contract with Monogram, and he and director William Nigh reteamed a few years later for Where Are Your Children? (1943), which focuses on juvenile delinquency among suburban kids during World War II. In both films, Cooper's respite from city life is to join the Navy, which the actor did after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Cooper saw action in the South Pacific and remained in the Navy Reserve until in 1982, rising to the rank of captain.
By Richard Harland Smith
By Richard Harland Smith
Boy of the Streets (1937) -
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's reward for Oscar-nominated child star Jackie Cooper, who had brought the studio prestige and profit with his films The Champ (1931), The Bowery (1933), and Treasure Island (1934), was to cut the actor loose once he had hit his awkward teenage years. Floating from studio to studio in search of work, Cooper landed at Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, where he took the lead in Boy of the Streets (1937), the studio's answer to Warner Brothers' socially conscious ghetto drama Dead End (1937). At the time Monogram's most expensive production, Boy of the Streets attends the plight of the children of immigrants crammed together in a New York slum and of progressive efforts to improve their situation. Dead End alumna Marjorie Main costars as Cooper's bone-weary mother (the actress would later inherit Cooper's former costar, Wallace Beery, at Metro) while Island of Lost Souls' "Panther Woman" Kathleen Burke appears as an heiress turned slumlord, and future cowboy actor Bill Elliott (still billed as Gordon Elliott) plays a reform-minded physician. The film's success in 1937 earned Cooper a contract with Monogram, and he and director William Nigh reteamed a few years later for Where Are Your Children? (1943), which focuses on juvenile delinquency among suburban kids during World War II. In both films, Cooper's respite from city life is to join the Navy, which the actor did after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Cooper saw action in the South Pacific and remained in the Navy Reserve until in 1982, rising to the rank of captain.
By Richard Harland Smith
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Variety called this film Monogram's most ambitious production to date. Some reviews noted similarities to Samuel Goldwyn's Dead End (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.0981), which was released a few months earlier. Harrrison's Reports commented, "It is a sort of Dead End, in which George Kann, the producer, and William Nigh, the old reliable director, have been able to accomplish almost what Sam Goldwyn accomplished with more than twenty times the amount of money they had at their disposal....The moral is the same in the story of this picture as it is in the story of Dead End-that poverty and environment in the tenement districts of the big cities breed criminals, and that the same young boys and girls, reared in a better environment, would turn out good citizens." According to New York Times, this film was awarded the Parents' Magazine medal for the best movie of the month. According to New York Times, Jackie Cooper, whose contract a year earlier was not renewed by M-G-M, was signed by Monogram for two more films because of his performance in this film. This was the first film of Maureen O'Connor, a fourteen-year-old radio singer. Doris Rankin is listed as a cast member in a Hollywood Reporter production chart, but her participation in the final film has not been confirmed.
